EduScrum in the classroom - A conversation with Willy Wijnands

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

And the change of education will not happen in 2 years, but that it will happen is for sure. I believe in it 100%.

Such a pleasure today to be able to speak to Willy Wijnands. Willy is the creator author and founder of EduScrum and co-founder of the worldwide initiative Agile in Education. Billy taught chemistry and science at the Ashram College in Alphen an der Rhein for 40 years and is an Aikido and Tai Chi and Shiatsu teacher. He's the author of the EduScrum Guide and co-author of Scrum in Acti and contributor to the Agile and Lean Concepts for Teaching and Learning. You can follow Billy on Twitter @willievynans and @edgyscrum.

Hey, there he is. Hey, how are you, man?

I'm busy, very busy, more busy than before I quit school.

Wow, well, that tells you something. So just to start off with, it's getting on towards 10 years since you started Edgy Scrum. I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what were the initial inspirations for starting it?

It started— I didn't looking for a new way of working, but I was inspired by a friend of mine. He worked in a company, an IT company in Amsterdam, Schoenberg-Villas, and he introduced me to Jeff Sutherland's Scrum. Jeff Sutherland did a 2-day training at Scrum at Schoenberg-Villas in Amsterdam. So, and my friend draw on a 1xH4 paper what he learned from Jeff.

Yeah.

And that was in July. And in August, September, I started directly with one class as a pilot. In the beginning, I was super surprised what happened. Students working together, collaborating together. And when I started with one class as a pilot and I was surprised what was happening. So I took one class extra. It was also a good surprise. And next to that, another class. And I have 3 classes at the moment. And it was good to see what's happening with the students. So in January 2012, I added 6 classes at the same time, and so I had 9 classes for that year to work with Eduscrum.

Wow.

And it was astonishing what was happening. It was— I never saw this before, and it was— I was not looking for another way of teaching, but it happens, it happens. And it was Scrum, and I translated transform into Eduscrim, yeah, is a good way to put chaos into structure and to give ownership to the students and let the students working together. Yeah, so they have to collaborate together, have to communicate together. You give them a lot of freedom by let them be creative in their working. That is a very important tools they have to understand by themselves. One of my issues always in my teaching career is personal development. So you see the students grow and they're as a person, they become acquainted with their conscious about their own qualities and they discover their qualities. But that was a great thing to see what's happening with my students.

Great. So, so they picked it up pretty naturally, did they? Straight away?

That was naturally, that was an organic stuff. So for students, the students, it is an organic way of working, working together. The problem nowadays in education is, and still is, is that we have to stick to the curriculums and do the exams. And that is normal. We cannot change and throw away the exams and the curriculums. That is solid stuff. But what we can change is how do we present our new way of teaching. That can we do it and put subject into projects.

So that process of actually rewriting some of your, you know, your learning plans, your curriculum documents, was that a process that came easy to you in the first place, taking that curriculum from the Netherlands national curriculum and then transforming it into project-based work?

This is what I did all my teaching career. I'm a science teacher and chemistry teacher, so I put all my chemistry stuff and science stuff into projects. I tell my students, what is the benefit of chemistry? Is it only the stupid chemistry stuff, or how can we apply it? So I go to the, to the end. How can we apply your subject into a project? And that's what I did, but I didn't have tools to make it transparent for myself, but also for the students.

Yeah, very nice. You mentioned Jeff Sutherland, so he, I mean, he talks about you in his TEDx talk. One of the originators of Scrum. How influential was he? So he kind of gave you the inspiration with the training, but was he then involved in the early setting up and writing the EduScrum Guide and setting up the organization?

What Jeff did for me in the beginning was supporting me. He was enthusiastic, and when we translate and transform the Scrum Guide in the EduScrum Guide, he reviewed my guide and he gave me permission to making 8-Scrum out of Scrum. And that was a real benefit out of it. And in beginning in 2013, he came to my school and he talked to my students, he talked with his teachers, and he was very surprised what he saw in my class and what's happening. And the students coming in, they work by themselves, we could talk with each other. He was really surprised what's happening.

That's great. And I'm sure pretty happy to see that Scrum was having an impact there. I mean, his big thing is about increasing productivity, right? So developing projects that meet the deadline and generate an effective outcome along the timeline as a better way of working. You're talking about personal development a bit. What do you think are the biggest impacts on the students themselves when it comes to involvement with, with EduScrum?

What we are doing with EduScrum, the outcome of the products, the testing and the learning stuff is improved. That is one. Second, I do the same work in less time. You can gain at least 30% of learning stuff because students work in teams together. They are dependent on each other. So when you, you can even teach 60 or 70 students at the same time. Yeah, because you're not teaching 70 students. When you have 60 students and you have 12 teams out of 5, then you only teach to 12 units, but it is impossible to teach 60 standalone students. That is impossible. They don't react to it. So what I do with my students in the content is improving. And next to that is the team development that they know each other much better. They have more fun, enjoy working together, and the personal development that the students become conscious about who am I and Oh, they are surprised by themselves and they can more be themselves and they are protected in their own team. So that is also a lot of encouraging stuff and empowering the students working with Eduscram in teams.

And do you do that consciously? So do you help them to understand themselves as a conscious part of the process? Like for example, when you're grouping them up into their teams?

Yeah, that is what we are doing. We're building teams based on qualities and skills. And at the end, one of the criteria is you have to choose teams where all qualities are represented in it. That's one. Second, during the process, we have some review moments on the product or team or personal development, but we have time for it. That's one. And at the end, we do a big retrospective. The big retrospective is not only on the product, not only on the test, not only on the report or presentation or whatever. That's one. That's also we do, but We're going into the deep for the personal development and let them communicate with each other about their improvement.

Yeah.

So we make them conscious out of it. And what I'm doing with my students is at the end of the school year, every period of 3 months, they write a portfolio about their personal development. So at the end they have a kind of report about themselves.

Yeah, very nice. Yeah, that's great.

That is really beautiful books to read.

Yeah, I can imagine. And what about the challenges? Because obviously this is not what they're walking into when they walk into a different classroom. So are they just completely thirsty for this stuff and just dive straight in, or do some of them have a bit more of a hard time adapting?

Yeah, you're right. What's happening with the challenging of the students in the beginning, where you set up your way of working with Eduscam in the classroom, A very important point is that the teacher must really understand how Edison works, but most important, he must be open. He must have guts. He must have courage to be agile and not do agile trick, but be agile. So he must really understand it, why he doing the things, because the role of a teacher changed from teacher instructor to coach and even servant leader. He become a leader from his group of teams. So that is one point. The second point is not all students like the way of working, and that is normal. It's not the holy grail.

Sure.

But the students who are very intelligent and don't want to work together with other people don't like it in the beginning at all. That change also. So you must not push them to work together as a strict rule, but also you must be agile to get the best to the students. So you have to adjust it also. And next to the resistance for some students, you have also resistance from the teachers in the school.

Okay.

That is the same because we are educated in the old school way of teaching. And when you try to do a new way of teaching, then you have to step out of your comfort zone.

Yeah.

But I know for sure every good teacher all over the world has a lot of knowledge to teach whatever he wants, but that is the old school sending thing. And when a teacher as a person rely on themselves and have guts, he can bring every Agile tool in the world to his students.

Yeah. Nice. But it is a threat to the traditional role of the teacher for sure. So there's some resistance understandably, right?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Because your control mechanism, it seems like it is gone, but I am a control freak too, all my life and still. But it is good. You control them in another way. You oversee the flips on the walls. Yeah, you oversee the run-up chart, you see how the progress is. And when it not work very well, then also I included lessons and I go back to classical sending teaching. But when I talk then 40 or 50 or 60 minutes even, they are full attention to it because, okay, I'm teaching already again in the old way. Then they listen really and That is also happening.

Yeah, that's good. But I can imagine they're, they're listening because they can see that they've really, they've reached a problem in their project, in their Scrum process, and then they need this input so that they can then apply that new knowledge back into the project and then push on because they've become blocked by something and they need the knowledge to then move past it, right?

Yeah, exactly what you say. That is what's happening. And also that students, when I tell something about the stuff they have learned, then they recognize it. Okay, yes, yes, yes, we did it, we know it. And there's one sort of confirmation about what they really learned. When I try to interfere in their way of hard working, they say, please, Willy, we are working, keep your mouth shut. You disturb us. So the workflow, you must look when do you interfere or when do you come into a team to ask questions.

That's great. That's the kind of sensitivity, a different kind of sensitivity that the teacher needs.

Yeah, yeah. What I say, you have to dare to let it go. And when you— I say it fails, no problem, then you teach in the classical way for a few minutes or a few hours, whatever. But the students say also in the beginning, please tell us what we have to do. Yeah, so the old way of traditional teaching, because I used to it. Yeah, and especially the, the lazy guys and the intelligent guys or girls lay back like in a cinema, lay back and then tell me and I absorb it. And when I work together, it works slower and slower. But you have to give them project out of subject so big that they have to work together. So if they divide their work— and we need other kind of students who will fill the gap between old school, a traditional way of teaching, and companies because there is a gap. And by the mindset, this is the very biggest problem for teachers. Students, okay, but the students are very flexible to learn the more mindset.

Yeah, no, definitely. You mentioned this idea of doing agile, and for people that are not so familiar with what agile means, we're trying to get teachers to be more agile in their approach and then ultimately to get the students to be more agile, not just do agile. So could you kind of give a bit more of a detail on what that means to people that aren't quite so familiar with this idea of Agile?

The difference between doing Agile and being Agile is what I also see in companies, that when you're doing Agile, you do the tricks, you do the artifacts, you do the ceremonies, but not really understand why you are doing it. Yeah, so when you are being agile, then you are really agile and you can adjust at the, at the right moment and the right spot, and you have the guts to stop or to block this kind of wrong direction work. Yeah, so that is very important for me. I'm an Aikido teacher, so we are being agile. Aikido is for me an ultimate physical exercise to be agile. That is really going with the flow, turning the focus on other points and go into your direction, what you want to do.

That's interesting because did I read somewhere that Jeff Sutherland is also into Aikido?

Yes, yes, maybe it is a coincidence or not, I don't know, but in his early days he was also an Aikido master and trainer. So yes, I met a lot of people in the Agile world who did or do Aikido, yes.

Interesting.

What, what in Aikido is the words of Shu, Ha, Ri, and Shu, Ha, Ri is also implemented in the Scrum way of working. The Shu phase, the Ha phase, and the Ri state. So that is also what Jeff brings into the Scrum way of working.

Yeah, and because it sometimes it feels like when, especially when people are talking about agile mindsets and you've been talking about personal development, that maybe there's something, there is something a little bit deeper going on within this talk about Agile and Scrum. And it's not just a superficial way of working, but it's actually moving towards a way of, way of working which the whole person is involved somehow. And it's about personal development as well as just improving productivity and good content knowledge and good assessment results.

Yeah. And when this happens, when you go into the personal development, it is not a soft way of working or treat people, but you support them and make them conscious about it. And when you dare to lose time in personal development, you will gain a lot of time. And the students are well seen. And when, when you work with teams, a lot of bullying kind of stuff, it will be gone because the student had the safety of his team, of her team. So it is also protected. So he feels himself in a safe environment.

Just to shift slightly toward the bigger perspective, in 2016 you connected up with a whole bunch of other Agile Scrum educators. What was the main goal behind doing that?

The main goal about that, we wanted to write a new kind of Agile manifesto for education.

Yeah.

And we worked there with certain guys and girls together in Orlando, and we were a lot of exchange experiences and we a lot of philosophy about what we want and why and this kind of stuff. And it took us 4 days, really. We worked 8, 9 hours a day.

Nice.

And even, and even after and during dinner and drinking a bottle of beer, we did a lot. Yeah, we did a lot of work.

Good.

And about the bottle of beer, yeah, we have to make a visualization about how can we make it visible in a simple way with less words.

Yeah.

And that is not much reading, but when you see a picture and when you see the Agile in Education compass, you see it, then okay, then you know when you understand the underlying stuff. But the compass is created when we were drinking after dinner and we use a round surf plate to draw the circle out of it. And then, yeah, yeah, we draw some points out of it and then it was a compass. So it was creating during the 4 days.

And how do you feel, so 3 years on, do you feel like this is having a bigger impact? Are the ripples, you know, heading out into education more broadly to really shift things?

Yeah, what I see in the world— I started in 2011 with Edukram and I trained a little bit schools in the Netherlands and some schools abroad, but since 2016, and maybe it happens about Agile education, I don't know, but since 2016 I met a lot of people from Germany, from the UK, and in 2017 it began to come to Poland, Russia, Spain, US, and now it is exploding all over the world. People in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, US, Guatemala, Mexico, Uruguay, Panama, Argentina, Brazil. Now just contacted me people from Sweden, Lettland, Denmark, Finland. So I— Turkey, of course. Maybe I forgot, but it is exploding.

Good, that's awesome. But just to be clear, you're— when you say all of these countries are coming towards it, those are countries specifically picking up the EduScrum work, right? Or are there other, other agile approaches going on?

Not only EduScrum, but what I talk about is what I do with EduScrum all over the world.

Yeah.

But of course there are, and EduScrum, it is a tool. It is not the holy grail tool, but for me, I can integrate with EduScrum a lot of principles and values all over the world and combine them and it fits into EduScrum, but you can also use another tool. And it's not only what Ediscom is performing in the Agile world. There are a lot initiatives all over the world to connect to each other. New schools are popping up, new way of thinking are popping up. People are trying to change the school in an existing school. That is very, very, very hard to do it. That's my own experience also. And people creating now totally new schools. We have still to stick to the curriculum and exams, no problem. That will change in the time also. And what we are trying to do with several people is connecting all good energy all over the world to make a very big school, a school like Light Schools, for instance.

Yeah, so it's a pretty optimistic message that I'm hearing. There are a lot of people talking about the same kind of transformations that they want to see in education. I think they've been talking about it for a long time and it doesn't always come through. You know, there's still a lot of inertia in the system and a lot of traditional practices going on, which, which just take a long, long time to change. And maybe some people sometimes are frustrated by the speed of the change or the lack of speed. But what I'm hearing from you is a pretty positive message that things are changing. Has there been any times when you're, you have been frustrated by the lack of change?

I'm not frustrated of what's happening now. Because since, what I say, 2016, this really going like a rocket. The exploding stuff is like a rocket of Ediscrum and agile way of working. I become frustrated of the traditional school. We still have the exams from 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, and now we have a new way of— we need new kind of thinking people. They must be creative, we must give them trust, we must give them critical thinking, this kind of stuff. We need other kind of people. Also with the ministers of different countries have also a responsibility to give good way of education and don't throw the old way of teaching away, but be flexible. And Minister of Education in the Netherlands are also seeking for new ways. This is like a mammoetanker, you know, a big ship.

Yeah.

A big ship, and when you have to change course, oh, this costs a lot of power, so it takes a lot of time. And the change of education will not happen in 2 years, but that it will happen is for sure. I believe in it 100%, but I don't dare to say, oh, in 5 years we are finished. No, I don't know.

Sure. Well, I'm happy to be on the journey with you, man. So just as a final thought, nearly your 10-year anniversary for EduScrum. How can you see it developing as we try and turn this tanker around? What does it look like in 10 years' time?

Well, the first I want to say, I am the founder of Etherscan, but I not want to be telling you or other people that it must be Etherscan. It must be an agile way of working. And what tool you need, you can take every tool, what you want, where you're satisfied with it, where you're feeling the right stuff with it. So over 10 years, I hope, and I hope earlier, that there are more schools, new kind of schools building, physical schools, but also online schools where we connect the good initiatives together so that we not only in the Netherlands, in Saudi Arabia or Arabic Emirates or Indonesia or China or whatever, we work together and then we learn from each other. So the students for the future, for me, looks like I want something to learn and where can I get my information? So I sit behind my computer and maybe I go exchange really physically to making new teams, kind of local schools to join together, or regional schools or national schools or international schools. So that is what I hope to see, that you can get all the information on the internet and connect it in a good way together, but also keep in mind that the quality is also very important.

Sure. No, interesting. But you're moving past this idea of school as one specific building and one specific institution to maybe more like a school as a network of local groups and global networks online. And that's an interesting idea.

Like tribes, the tribes working together. Yeah, you build new communities. Sure, you build new communities and connect the community together and interact also with the parents, the students, and the teachers. Join them together. Ask the students what they want to learn. Ask the parents, can you teach our students what's happening in the companies? What do you need for kind of employees in the companies? So we can adjust our way of education to the students to make them prepared for the companies and your way of working.

Nice. Great. Thank you very much, man. It's an absolute pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you very much. Talking with you too, of course.

Amazing. Thank you really.

Cheers. Okay.

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